Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

The Good
Using the same engine from Deadly Alliance, Armageddon looks a bit outdated, though this never ruins the fun of the game. The blood effects in fact look better than in Deception and the characters made specifically for Armageddon (those which were not directly taken from the 2 previous games) look quite nicely detailed, but that's about it.

Not so much to say about the sound either - the sound effects sound just like in Deception for the most part, and there are a couple of good soundtracks playing on the arenas. For some reason, unlike in Deadly Alliance or Deception, after being decapitated or getting their neck broken, characters still tend to scream after that. Was it a bug which Midway was too lazy to fix or they felt some nostalgia in it (the same thing was in the old 2D MK-s, remember?), it isn't actually annoying and doesn't ruin anything.

As for the gameplay, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in any way, is it online, versus mode, or just the arcade, is a quite fun game. You've got a huge roster of 62 characters from the entire franchise, that alone makes it a must-buy for a Mortal Kombat fan, new additions include air combat, which is simply fun, a parry to brake an opponents attack (combo breakers from Deception also remain here), lots of arenas with different death traps (or in other words, stage fatalities), an option to create your own fighter, improved online mode, compared to Deception. You can even take your created fighter to show and fight with it online, after this and everything else I mentioned, what more can you ask for? A new way of finishing your opponents has been added to this game, namely Kreate-A-Fatality. This is something which was never seen before and it is definitely fun to discover in what way can you simply finish off your opponent (the variety and amount of moves is as ridiculous as it is good).

In tradition of the 2 previous games, Armageddon has some bonus features in it, although being primarily a fighting game.

One of these is Konquest mode, which appeared in both of the previous games. However, this time it's different from the previous ones. If previously the Konquest mode involved around the main character traveling in worlds and interacting with other characters, here it's more similar to a single player action game like Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, or God of War (there are even a couple of RPG elements, namely you get new special moves). By this, Konquest is probably better than in the previous games, as it is just more fun. You run around levels, collect Koins, items that you need to unlock new characters, find chests with alternate costumes for characters, face off hordes of enemies, sometimes using a cold weapon, sometimes battling in a traditional MK way with other game characters. Add to that that it has a quite interesting storyline. This all makes Konquest worth even more than one play-through, you will enjoy this mode, believe me.

Another thing that returns is the Krypt, where you stop by after you collect Koins from different modes (Kombat, Konquest, or Motor Kombat) and use them to purchase extra game content, which include alternate costumes for characters, new arenas, soundtracks, videos, sketches, pictures and other boring stuff.

A completely new feature in Armageddon is Motor Kombat. This is simply a parody on the Mario Kart series. You have 10 cartoonish versions of different characters, who you race in 5 different tracks. Each character has a special move, and to make it more fun, the tracks have specific stage fatalities on them, so you better drive carefully. This can also be played up to four players on split-screen, or up to 8 players online. Although not near perfect, it's actually pretty fun to play when you get tired of the main game some times.

The Bad
Armageddon is a big game with many content, and so it is that it is impossible for a game with that many content to not have flaws.

Starting with Kombat mode, the biggest complaint from fans has to be the Kreate-A-Fatality feature. Although at first points quite interesting, after several times you pull out an Ultimate Fatality, you'll start to miss the traditional fatalities from previous games. Although you can in fact recreate some classic fatalities by characters, you still can't recreate some classics like Kitana's "Kiss of Death", Liu Kang's "Dragon Morph", Scorpions' "Toasty", the list goes on... Also, there are more than a few bugs in this game, and once you'll start playing online, you'll immediately notice how unbalanced the game is. None the less, generally it's a good game.

A small complaint I also have about Konquest mode: the fact that the camera is problematic at following the character makes it frustrating to navigate through the traps in the levels sometimes, but you can live with that.

The Bottom Line
Despite its flaws, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is more good than it's bad, and actually almost very good. Both MK fans and fans of other fighting games will find Armageddon a worthy purchase and will have lots of fun with it.

The Good
The fact that it has 62 characters, from the new to classic, makes this game alone worth looking at, everyone from the classic Reptile clear up to Quan Chi. 64 fighting arenas, most with their own stage fatalities make playing in them a blast, even playing in the old pit from Mortal Kombat l and the Kreate-a-Fighter mode is long, long overdue for a Mortal Kombat game. Even Motor Kombat, the MK version of Mario Kart, is fun, who doesn't wish when they are playing this they're imagining knocking Mario in a fire pit or pushing Yoshi into a molten press, smashing him to bits. The opening sequence of the fighters fighting there way up the pyramid got my blood pumping, this game almost seems perfect, which leads me too...

The Bad
To me there a two major fatal flaws to this game, one of which is the Kreate-a-Fatality mode. When I first heard of it, my first thought was it was to go with the Kreate-a-Fighter mode, but instead they used it for all the regular characters, taking away the classic Mortal Kombat fatalities and replacing them with long complicate button pressing. It does seem like a good idea, but trying to pull off some fatalities makes you want to pull your hair out with frustration, you can, however, create short fatalities just by simply smashing the buttons together. To me, this seems more like a cop out, instead of coming up with more classic fatalities for the fighters, they put in the old brutalities and made them longer. The second is the endings, with the opening sequence, I thought at long last they would have video endings for the fighters, instead all they do is have the fighters practice their fighting moves on the top of the pyramid as the story scrolls up from the bottom as the narrator reads it out to you, like you are illiterate. To me, this was a major disappointment. I would understand since they made not have enough room for videos with the insane amount of fighters, but they could have least use the comics styles as they did in Deception.

The Bottom Line
This game really isn't that bad, true no true fatalities or video endings are a bummer, at least it makes up for it with the quantity of fighters and arenas. It wouldn't be bad to own if you can find it cheap, but if you can help it, spring a bit of money for the premium pack which includes an arcade-perfect Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 emulator. At least then, when you are frustrated trying to use fatalities on Armageddon, you can switch over to UMK3 and relive some memories.